28 Jul 2009

There is a poster for FA 1 New Order / Ike Yard gig at the Ukrainian National Home, New York, 19 November 1981 which was filmed for the FACT 77 Taras Shevchenko video.

Until recently it was thought that the Factory America catalogue number didn't actually appear on anything physical. However, there was a poster which bears the "A FACT A FIRST" denotion. The poster design was a collaboration between Michael Shamberg and Ike Yard's Stuart Argabright. Stuart did the handwritten elements including the scrawled "NEW ORDER".

Many thanks to Mike Stein for his detective work and photography and to Stuart Argabright for shedding light on the history.

You are invited to come along and hear David talk about his book and the research he did with local people into the early life of Tony Wilson when he lived in Marple. You will be able to buy a signed copy of David’s book for a great price too!

The evening is free but you will need to book your free ticket to ensure a place.

Please contact the Reader Development Team on 0161 474 5751 or email readers@stockport.gov.uk

16 Jul 2009

The gig will be the climax of the day's events surrounding the unveiling of blue plaques on the Kenion Street site of the Cargo/Suite 16 recording studio and the Tractor Sound Studios in nearby Heywood.

Support will come from Safety Pins, Tin Griffin and Rhythms of Rochdale, with DJ sets by Clint Boon (Inspiral Carpets), Martin Coogan (Mock Turtles) and John Robb (Goldblade).

8 Jul 2009

Next year will see the publication by Aurum of James Nice's book Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records. The book is set to be published in Spring 2010 and will feature a foreword from Jon Savage.

Nice's LTM label's dvd documentary Shadowplayers, tracing the early history of Factory Records between 1978 and 1981, was released in 2006.

In order to celebrate 40 years since man first stepped off the earth and onto the moon, we bring you a space cabaret. Numerous musicians will perform one-off interpretations of the space pioneers and visual artists from across the country will transform Islington Mill into a journey through the start. In addition there will be a Lunar Module Ceremony, in which various model makers have been invited to reconstruct “The Eagle”. But will she fly?

Details are as follows:

BITING TONGUES – back from their own 30 years in deep space. You sent them out there – now hear a full mission report.

A COMPLETE HISTORY OF SPACE MUSIC

Various artists will address the music of the space pioneers:

- May Ming reinterpret Les Baxter’s Music Out of the Moon (chosen as Neil Armstrong’s personal cassette on the Apollo 11 mission)- Paddy Steer recalibrates music from Joe Meek’s “I Hear a New World”- LA77 rewires Dick Hyman's "Moon gas"- Matt Halsall plugs in his trumpet for some Classic Space Jazz- Ken Hollings connects suburbia to outer space in his lecture "Welcome to Mars"- Massonix will perform "Pulsars", a suite for radio waves from the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope

LUNAR MODULE CEREMONY

We have invited various model makers to reconstruct "The Eagle". But will she fly? "You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue!"

The Mercury Seven a DJ team brought together from a rigorous selection process of clinical, endurance and psychological testing. Who will be first in orbit: Kelvin Brown, Graham Massey, John McCready, LA77? Only four survived.

RECLAIM THE MOON

Aware of the fact that NASA's free footage has been used to death in trippy visuals from the 1960s through to the present day, we will celebrate its overuse by using it to death. It's all we've got left!

Visuals by Soup Collective – Royal College of Art Moving Image Collective

Conspiracists and doubters: we provide a room for your turgid debates (the anechoic chamber at Salford University).

You are invited to come along and hear David talk about his book and the research he did with local people into the early life of Tony Wilson when he lived in Marple. You will be able to buy a signed copy of David’s book for a great price too!

The evening is free but you will need to book your free ticket to ensure a place.

Please contact our the Reader Development Team on 0161 474 5751 or email readers@stockport.gov.uk

7 Jul 2009

The next album release by The Durutti Column is a 6-CD limited edition box set on Kooky Records entitled 'Four Factory Records'. Containing the first four classic albums released on Factory Records, all newly remastered by Keir Stewart from the original master tapes, the set comprises:

All this plus a package of interviews with the key protagonists from the period including Vini Reilly, Bruce Mitchell, John Metcalfe, Keir Stewart and Tim Kellett.

Advance copies will be available for sale at the Manchester International Festival shows 15-17 July 2009. It will then be available in all good record shops (actual and virtual) and direct from Kooky from September 2009. The project will be a total edition of 1,000 copies of which a limited number will include the two bonus discs.

Kooky has tried to make this lavish package available at a sensible price. If you can't make the MIF shows, please check back at the end of July when Kooky will start taking pre-orders for mail order.

Red Turns To continue their comeback with a support slot for Martin Bramah's (ex-The Fall) new group Factory Star at their gig at The Studio in Manchester on Thursday 9 July 2009. Tickets priced GBP 6.00 (excluding booking fee) are available now from Piccadilly Records, Manchester, or for 8.00 on the door.

In the grey days of late 1970s post-punk Manchester, youth culture was a serious affair: every musical performance was measured mostly by the conviction of its delivery. The term 'New Wave' opened up free vistas where acquired skills could once again be exercised after punk's monochrome blur. It could be applied to anything from a James 'Blood' Ulmer record to the latest Throbbing Gristle release, Magazine to Swell Maps. Move outside that terrain into Sun Ra, Parliament, Frank Sinatra and Martin Denny, and your options were suddenly without limit...

Then came Tony Wilson's Factory Club (at the Russell Club in Hulme) offering an open invitation to experiment that was taken up when Ken Hollings, Howard Walmsley, Eddie Sherwood and a few others decided to make some noise to accompany their 16mm silent epic Biting Tongues. A further performance followed a few weeks later, when Colin Seddon and Graham Massey disbanded their Post Natals project and joined up. The film itself, a flashing series of negative images, became a memory; the name remained.